Tamerlan Tsarnaev, gone but not forgotten
By Cheryl Dean
GumshoeNews has recently published my reports about the prosecutorial misconduct of Carmen Ortiz at the Tsarnaev trial, and the hopelessness (or what looks to me to be the collusion) of the “Defense” team. That includes Judy Clarke and David “Three-Bags-Full-Sir” Bruck.
Today I wish to tackle the so-called proof that Tamerlan bought some pressure cookers, as the means of bombing the Marathon. I think everyone who “read about” the case was persuaded that there was good evidence of this purchasing. Didn’t the FBI find receipts in his wallet?
Well, OK, if you can swallow the story that a man on the run from the law would be carrying, in April, incriminating documents dated January, fine. (Don’t forget, he also had his high school diploma in the car….)
But for those who still like to embrace reality, it is a relief to look at the court testimony about that matter. Get ready to laugh because it is actually funny.
Few citizens know that the way in which the government tried to connect Tamerlan to the purchase of the pressure cookers was by displaying a GPS’s printout that showed someone (just “someone,” no named individual) making a journey from Cambridge to a shop in Saugus!
The emphasis in court was on the GPS device. Granted, such devices can track the itinerary of your car, or your person if it’s in your pocket. But as you will see, the GPS that reportedly recorded the offending trip to a shop did not have any claimed connection to the man in question, the late Tamerlan. Amazing, isn’t it?
The judge (Judge George “Give me anything, I’ll take anything” O’Toole) accepted as evidence of Tamerlan’s ownership of the GPS device, the mere fact that Dun Meng had referred to it!
Yes I do mean Danny, the weaver of the hopeless story of a carjacking (complete with an “I did it” boast by the fugitive Tamerlan, in which the people of Boston are now well versed).
Dun Meng testified in court — and had told the media much earlier — that Tamerlan had a GPS in his hands and was playing with it or programming it (remember that?), as he and Tamerlan sat in Dun Meng’s SUV.
Believe it or not, it was the Defense that seized upon this GPS idea as a way of showing that it was the deceased brother Tamerlan who was the real terrorist.
Yes, it was the defense that helped the people of Boston understand that Tamerlan had bought pressure cookers! It was touted by media, nonstop, that this was a brilliant way to save Jahar – blame everything on Tamerlan.
I will quote from the trial documents, starting with a sidebar. That is, when the two sides talk to the judge without the jury listening. Watkins is Defense; Weinreb is Prosecution. As you will see, the actual origin and ownership of the precious GPS is quite “up for grabs.”
From transcript #1567 Page 100-101. The bolding is mine:
WATKINS: In caps there it says “hijacked vehicle.” We pointed this out to the government a couple of times, that that part should be removed. It’s a GPS device; “hijacked vehicle” is –
MELLIN: In the vehicle that was hijacked.
WATKINS: It was found in the vehicle that was hijacked, but it’s a very confusing piece of –
THE COURT: Let me take a closer look. Do you have a paper copy of it? … Well, I wanted to read the writing. I thought I saw a paper copy earlier.
WEINREB: Can I just inquire, I’m not entirely sure whether the nature of the objection goes to a dispute about whether the Mercedes was actually carjacked by someone whether it’s –
WATKINS: It is both. There’s no necessity of putting it in “from hijacked vehicle.” It’s mostly confusing in that what happened is it was recovered from the Mercedes but it was actually used in other cars, and specifically in the CR-V and the Odyssey. [There is not a shred of evidence of this.]…
THE COURT: Who prepared the chart?
WEINREB: Someone at the FBI.
THE COURT: Not this guy
(FBI agent Fierabend who was on the witness stand)
WEINREB: No.
CHAKRAVARTY: Particularly, the witness James Tyra has already authenticated the plots. [He means the travels of the GPS]
CLARKE: And when he did, we talked about changing the word “hijacked” to “Mercedes.” I thought Mr. Weinreb agreed to do that, that’s why he didn’t admit the exhibit at the time, because he was going to change it.
THE COURT: Well, go ahead.
WEINREB: I’m still not sure I understand whether the objection is that it’s misleading to say that it was recovered from the Mercedes because of the defense argument that it was used in other cars, or whether the objection is to just the word “highjacked,” in which case I’m not sure it’s really a well-taken objection because there’s no real prejudice to the defense from the idea that the Mercedes was carjacked, the car was abandoned in the middle of Spruce Street. I mean, maybe there’s a claim that the accused didn’t carjack it, but that’s different from saying that the vehicle itself wasn’t taken from its owner. [Yes, you must say hijack, it is so vital to your pathetic case.]
WATKINS: In general terms in a summary exhibit, which is what that is, there shouldn’t be those kinds of pejorative terms. Aside from that, it’s confusing to the jury to talk about it being recovered from a hijacked vehicle when the testimony is going to be as to these plots it was in a different vehicle. [Can you beat this?]
THE COURT: Well, I think the second part is a more substantial one, the possibility of confusion of the jury. I first thought that this was the Mercedes-Benz’s GPS.
WEINREB: That’s why I led him through the fact that it’s a Garmin nuvi that can be moved from car to car, but this is the vehicle from which it was recovered.
THE COURT: How do you tie — assuming that the jury understands that it’s not the Mercedes car, how do you tie it to the defendant? I mean, can you show what cars it was used in?
WEINREB: No. But there was testimony from Dun Meng that, I believe, that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had a GPS device in his hands that he was programming….
[Attention! Help! Somebody please! This is the City of Boston!]
WEINREB: Frankly, there’s no other way to tie it. Frankly, it’s a Garmin nuvi GPS that was found in the Mercedes. The truth is that the defense does not want to keep this information out, they want it in, because it tends to show that Tamerlan Tsarnaev is the one who bought the Fagor pressure cookers…
…Frankly, their goal is to make it as clear as possible that it was Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s GPS and I think they’re entitled to do that to the extent they can.
[So now we see the Prosecution helping the Defense. Well, why not. They really are one and the same anyway, aren’t they?]
…but I don’t think they’re entitled to preclude the government from identifying it in a factually correct way, which is a device recovered from this car. All the other charts identified the places by what car they were found in.
THE COURT: I don’t think there’s much doubt on the evidence that the Mercedes was taken from Dun Meng.
You can call that “hijacked.” ….
[Or you could call it doing what your handler tells you to do.]
WEINREB: Well, it has to be identified some way. We have identified all the portable GPS devices based on where they were recovered. If it just says “GPS” on it –
THE COURT: No, no, it can say Dun Meng’s
WEINREB: It has nothing to do with Dun Meng.
CLARKE: “Found in the Mercedes.”
WEINREB: “Found in the Mercedes”? Okay. That’s fine. Okay. Okay.
THE COURT: But for now I think we can just blow it by.
[Sure, why not, so what if it’s a death penalty case.]
WATKINS: So at least for now where the exhibit is going to go up to the jury, how can we fix it in front of the jury so they’re not –
THE COURT: I’m going to tolerate them seeing it now and — but when they have it more permanently –
WEINREB: I’ll ask a couple of questions to try to highlight it and hopefully that will take care of it.
WATKINS: That it was found in other cars.
WEINREB: No, not that.
THE COURT: That it was taken from Dun Meng
[Third time he mentions it was Dun Meng’s]
WATKINS: So how does the jury know it was in another car?
WEINREB: That’s for the defense to prove, quite frankly. I can’t guess it was in other cars. I don’t have any evidence of that.
THE COURT: Was it fingerprinted?
Mr. Weinreb: There were no fingerprints found on it. [Even though Dun Meng said Tamerlan had it in his hands]
THE COURT: Okay. All right.
WATKINS: Thank you
(End of sidebar)
MR WEINREB: So this would be a better one to highlight. So could you read that?
AGENT FIERABEND: “GPS stops at 8:13 p.m. near 1201 Broadway, Square One Mall, Saugus, Massachusetts. Travel resumes at 8:42 p.m.”
Q That narrative, those words obviously weren’t in the GPS, correct?
A Correct.
Q But there was data in the GPS that says, at least to some degree, where it stopped and what time it stopped there?
A Yes.
WEINREB:
Q Okay. And then it traveled to some other locations and it winds up back on — after midnight near 397 Norfolk Street in Cambridge?
A That’s correct.
Q Okay. So let’s just return to the 8:13 stop.
I want to come away from the subject of GPS now in order to talk pressure cooker. But I believe that the real fraud is the way they’re speaking of a GPS as if they have evidence of Tamerlan having owned one in January. No they do not. The entire GPS notion is based on Danny’s claim that Tamerlan was playing with a GPS.
They also have no evidence of who did the purchasing of any Fangor pressure cookers. And yet this (along with outlandish backpack business) is supposed to be the key to the Marathon bombing. As you see from the testimony it’s all a sham.
WEINREB: And could I have Exhibit 1159 for the witness, please.
Q All right. Now, this is written in small letters, but did you review this recently?
A I did.
Q And so do you recognize it?
A I do.
Q The information, the purchase information you got from Macy’s, what form was it in? Was it a spreadsheet, a PDF?
A It was an Excel spreadsheet.
Q And it had all these purchases sorted by date and time?
A Yes.
Q So this thing you’re looking at here, is this an excerpt?
A Yes.
Q And is it a fair and accurate excerpt?
[There is nothing showing that this was a spreadsheet from Macy’s]
A I believe so.
WEINREB: The government offers 1159.
WATKINS: No objection.
THE COURT: Okay.
(Government Exhibit No. 1159 received into evidence.)
BY MR. WEINREB: So now I’m going to try to highlight it, at least the top portion… So the leftmost column .., just let me know, but what’s in the leftmost column?
A It’s the date.
Q And what date is this record for?
A It’s for January 31, 2013.
Q And what time?
A It’s 2038, or 8:38 p.m.
Q And what — where — all the way over near the right where it says where these Fagor pressure cookers were purchased, where does it say they were purchased?
A Square One [name of shop]
Q And the — they were purchased — under “associate,” that would be the — like the register who sold them, is it the same person?
A I believe the associate is the person and the register is the number. Fifty-one is the register.
Q The number of the register? And it indicates how many pressure cookers were purchased?
A Based on the SKUs, it appears there are two different size pressure cookers.
Q What sizes?
A Our investigation shows that the SKU’s were a six-quart pressure cooker and a four-quart pressure cooker.
Q So one of those three four-quart pressure cookers sold in Massachusetts during the relevant time period were sold on this date and time in Saugus, at the Square One Mall in Saugus, Mass.?
A Yes.
[Please remember we have no purchaser identified – ever. It is all a Danny extension so to speak. And you know how fake Danny is.]
Q And how does that compare to when that GPS that was found in the Mercedes was at the Square One Mall in Saugus?
A I believe the purchase is a few minutes before the GPS starts to move again.
[An American should have to hang for this?]
Q Okay. Does this data tell you what car the GPS was in at the time?
A No.
Q Does it tell you who was driving the car?
A No.
Q Does it tell you who might have been a passenger in the car?
A No.
Q Does it tell you who in the car, if anyone, actually purchased the pressure cooker?
A No.
Q Was there any surveillance video available from that Macy’s to help determine who might have actually purchased those pressure cookers?
A No.
Q So you can’t be sure who actually purchased them?
A Correct. I cannot be sure who actually purchased them. [Fine, then let the boy out of jail.] ….
Q Do you even know if that six-quart pressure cooker was one of the ones used on Boylston Street in the bombing?
A No.
As for the receipts turning up in Tamerlan’s wallet, I think the FBI should vary their formula once in a while and not plant receipts and ID all over the place. It’s getting so blatantly obvious and boring, so this just can’t be considered “evidence”.
Verdicts are supposed to be decided on actual proof, actual evidence, not the conjured up nonsense of attorneys. This is just one tiny example of the injustice perpetrated by all players in this sham trial.
It was easy to try to blame Tamerlan because he was deceased and couldn’t defend himself. Who actually did purchase the pressure cookers is still a mystery.
Or is it?
–Cheryl Dean’s most recent articles for GumshoeNews.com were one dated February 3, on Judge O’Toole’s meeting with the jurors, and one dated February 5, on what happened to Jahar at the side of the boat in Watertown. Dean does not engage in speculation; her source is the official trial record.
LOL. So much for their overwhelming evidences.
Josee, I think we should arrange a scale of Preposterosity. With it we could measure any small detail or large event. Maybe on a scale of 1-100, with 100 being completely preposterous.
To say “grass is green” is not preposterous at all and would therefore rate 1. To say that Tamerlan, or anyone, would do a carjacking when he already had a car — and was in trouble with the law — would rate maybe 85 in preposterosity.
Eventually this could become a standard “test” in law. There are may such tests that are spoken of seriously in court cases.
I like this preposterosity scale idea.
What preposterosity score would you give to a man carrying in his wallet the receipts from the purchase of a weapon?
(Oh, what the heck, make it a “weapon of mass destruction” so the case could be federal instead of just boring old state.)
What score would you give to a man leaving his high school diploma in his car (or his brother’s car, I am not clear on who owned which car)?. Actually please create two separate scores, one for leaving the dipolma in his own car, one for leaving it in a brother’s car.
If you show me yours, Speculator, I’ll show you mine. (I mean my scores for the above).
P.S. Regarding the diploma, please assume that it has been over a year since his high-school graduation.
The “he did it” defense seem to be colluding with the prosecution. I am shocked — and then shocked again.
What you may not know yet because we have not written about it yet is that Judy Clarke filed a motion to amend the Government’s proposed Guilt-Phase Preliminary Instructions
She filed the motion (1101-1) on March 2, 2015 asking the judge to strike the propose government instruction to tell the jurors that Dzhokhar had pleaded not guilty to all charges. Judge O’Toole agreed as it was not included in his instructions to the jurors.
She wanted to ensure that her ‘It was him’ did not get in conflict with the fact that Dzhokhar pleaded not guilty to all charges. Way to go Judy!
Josee, re the Motion from Judy, here is 18USC 1503:
“whoever . . . . corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice, shall be (guilty of an offense).”
As I said, this is just one tiny example of the non “evidence” used to convict Dzhokhar and sentence him to death. There are dozens more examples and I will tell you about those in the coming weeks and months. It’s criminal what unfolded at this sham trial, and someone should be in prison, but it shouldn’t be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
After the events of September 11, 2001, in New York, all the evidence required for the illegal immoral war(s) of aggression against people who were never a threat to anyone, resulting in the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children, and the displacement, the poisoning, the maiming and the orphaning of hundreds of thousands more….
was geroge w bush pointing in osamas direction and saying, “yeah, that’s him man.”
Today, every time we drive past a Random Breath Test station.. we are all considered guilty, until we prove our innocence. I tried to tell my kids, it wasn’t always like this, it used to be the other way around… We once, were all innocent.. until proven guilty…
ya try telling kids that to kids these days, and they just don’t believe ya.. 🙁
Fair, there are whole pages of these examples at Youtube:
the incident on this video is so awesome!!
BRILLIANT
The thing is that most people let the authorities do whatever they want to do. People don’t stand together as a real force and demand public enquiry into those events. Bostonians should ask for a public enquiry to get to the bottom of what was done to them by the people who are there to protect them.
Gday Josée
“The world, including Australia, stood up against the Coalition’s invasion in 2003. One million Australians took to the streets in February 2003 to demand Howard stop his march to war. He scathingly dismissed us as “the mob”. We were right to say no, and everything which we feared about the invasion and occupation — “Operation Iraqi Freedom” — was, tragically, proved right.” from here
He is a war criminal, and he still lives the life of luxury. You are right of course, people should revolt. Not sure about Boston, but in OZ, I believe, we suffer from the “I’m alright Jack, so up yours!”, if I’m not directly affected by anything, I don’t care.
Those people are happy to believe the worlds events are covered on the nightly news, and any gaps filled in by talk back radio, and wouldnt think there is an alternate view to any of that, let alone to go searching it out, and even if they were somehow enlightened.. how to get them to believe they can have any influence to change anything, if a million people marching can be dismissed so flippantly..
I know my posts seem pessimistic, I dont mean to portray just that, and I fully support anything you may be doing, although we operate under different laws here in Oz than in the video above.. I might just start carrying my own breath testing unit around with me though.. and see how I get on asking for reciprocal compliance. I wont hold my breath! 🙂
Dear Fair,
Why do you say “People should revolt”? They don’t have to do anything that drastic. They just have to stop thinking that when someone “up there” commits a crime we just have to wear it.
No we don’t. We have the law.
Dear Mary, the law, is an ass.
The law says John Howard, war criminal, can walk free.
The law says, I’m forbidden to use hemp, as a food, or a medicine, while harming no-one.
There is one law for them, and another for us. Law today, is interpreted according to power and influence, not justice, and morality or any other noble notion..
I understand what you are saying, just for the life of me, I can not see it.
The law says, that the Iraq war was illegal ( not to mention immoral ) yet the perpetrators, are not locked up, they are waging more wars.
How do we not have to wear it, when it keeps going on, and on, and on, and on? The injustice of Boston, the injustice of Pt Arthur, the injustice of … it never ends??? Perhaps, with your perserverence, you are successful in a single case, and it might have a domino effect… i really hope so.. thats the best I can hope for..
but in the grand scheme of things, these injustices, are so insignificant.. theres just so many.. how can we form an army of angry people around every single injustice? I have never been a person of faith.. more a fatalist. – feel so $%^&*(#@ helpless.
sorry. dont mean to be a dick.
just so you know though, whenever you want to march up the steps of parliament wearing your revolting boots.. Ill be right there .. and they will have to go through me to get to you.
“WE HAVE seen the necessity of the Union, as our bulwark against foreign danger, as the conservator of peace among ourselves, as the guardian of our commerce and other common interests, as the only substitute for those military establishments which have subverted the liberties of the Old World.”
— James Madison, Federalist Paper, November 30, 1787
I thought the prosecution had the burden of proof.
So either the FBI or the police or the prosecution or some assistant took this GPS and drove it around to where they wanted and then they put a bunch of data into a spreadsheet with the dates that they wanted or they just created a spreadsheet and said that the data was found in the GPS.
Even if someone did purchase a pressure cooker or two, have people forgotten that pressure cookers are used for cooking?
Lots and lots of people have them.
This is exactly what I was thinking while reading the tweets from the trial. Absolute insanity that anyone would take any of the phony evidence or witness statements seriously!
The FBI admitted that they went around and purchase material to reconstruct the pressure cookers. They could have taken along for a ride that GPS!
No wonder they wanted this stuff sealed
and speaking of prosecutorial misconduct and judge’s committing felony crimes, gotta share this one of a retired judge (who believes that courts are there to deliver ‘justice’ wow) deliberating whether that trial was ‘unfair’ and deserves a new one – be interesting if there’s one judge in america not bought and sold already and can grant this – precedent if nothing else. apparently exculpatory evidence presented in a TV series called ‘Serial’ (never heard of it myself) points to the fact that not all was presented in the actual trial. Jahar may become free yet… can you imagine a mini series (with tongue in cheek I’d say Steven Spielberg could direct and co-star in it, as he’s already has) http://www.projectcasting.com/news/where-to-invade-next
but I digress – Michael Moore better. (his next is being called something like, who to invade next – brilliant.) he could create the mini-series of the Boston Hoaxathan (my fav title) and then, with light cast on the ‘event’, reveal Judge O’Toole’s felony crime and Ortiz and the whole shambang on and on, unraveling at the speed of ‘true justice’… check this out…
http://thechronicleherald.ca/world/1341032-judge-deliberates-on-new-trial-for-serial-defendant
Replying to Fair Dinkum’s 8.36pm Valentine below:
Dear Fair, Part of me knows you are correct but I am going to try my sociobiology out on you again. I actually think if we understood our evolution we would have a better chance of standing up to those who frighten us. Really I know we can do it. ’Tude is everything. You don’t think Richard Deslauriers is crapping his drawers worrying about us? I think he is. As I said, the PTB are reeling – and they can’t find young helpers, as they managed to screw up EVERY child’s education. Such jerks.
Here is my riposte:
1. Howard is not a “war criminal” as there are no war crimes. You think you have read an ‘international law’ saying Nation A mustn’t hurt Nation B? Oh, very interesting, where is the authority that would impose it? Doesn’t exist. Humans are conquerors of weak foreign groups. Check the Bible.
Yes there are some pretty buildings at the Hague, but they are not mandated to do the job. They are mandated to NOT do the job. Maybe Geneva conventions say it is a crime but the point of the Geneva’s (written by the likes of Jan Smuts, oh please) was to make peeps think war is not so bad. (Jan was kissy kissy with Cecil Rhodes. Now please try to picture Cecil caring about humanity.) If you want to get Howard, don’t invoke “war crimes.”
2. I believe in the law (domestically) because the alternative is chaos. I do not see it as noble or moral but practical. I see us all as forever selfish. We are made that way. No human mammal is unselfish except to kin, to contractual partners, and to strangers in dire situations. We can’t be “good” naturally — but we can be TRAINED to be good. And since some will harm their neighbor, you have to have a mechanism to deter them, which is known as jail or whippings or something. It works well, as I recall.
3. Today, even if I won a case, it wouldn’t have a domino effect. Anyway I won’t win a case as the judges are in a trance. I assume Jahar will die at 24 and Martin will die at 49. The Cherri Bonneys – who are few and far between – could make the diff. We shall see. The point is she needs to convert a lot of ordinary people. It is the ordinaries – ALL OF US – who are causing the problem.
4. I guess it is an emotional habit. Folks go along with anything. They calculate that it’s safer, for themselves, to do nothing. They are incorrect, dammit. It is worth having a go. Today forced vax, tomorrow forced microchip implants, the next day, no food if you have displeased your owner. (And in a no-food condition one cannot fight.)
PS Thank you, in advance, for being there on the steps, Sir. It is nice to feel protected even if you could only muster an umbrella for a weapon. Umbrellas are OK. . ….
But “revolting” is not the answer. The answer is putting into the paddy wagon the persons who killed Tamerlan. Their colleagues will hesitate to do the next killing if peeps would do this now. IS THERE ANY REASON IN THE WORLD TO LET THEM WALK FREE?
Who needs a revolution? Some Bostonians should walk into the local police station and make charges against the murderers. Like you would readily do if someone stole your bicycle. I recommend three really old people and three really young people go in together and JUST DO IT.
Cheers Mary, as I dont live in Boston, if you ever want an extra unbrella holder when we walk into the local cop station to complain about Martin Bryant injustice, let me know when and where.
As for Howard,( et alia ) if war crimes are out of the question, surely then, theres some local laws then that might wipe that supercilious smirk off his face.
It worries me that the government, F.B.I. And others are so corrupt. How can it be that these people in power , these people that are hired to keep us safe, these people that the public look up to can do whatever they want. Who can we rely on to tell the truth and to keep justice n our world. The more I learn the worse I feel. What if my son ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Bonnie, great question! This article is about to expire off of Gumshoe’s top page, so instead of replying to it here I will include it in a posting later this week. Hope you don’t mind.
[…] They should not have to argue that Tamerlan Tsarnaev didn’t purchase pressure cookers. (Recall Cheryl Dean’s article on the evidence presented for the alleged purchase. Believe me, a top comedian could not improve on […]